Do you want some tips about applying for art jobs? Want to know where the inspiration for enemies comes from or what our artists’ favourite games are? Maybe you are curious about what our artists do here, or how long it takes them to complete a task, or what an average day is like? Ask us anything!

What is this “Ask A Dev” thing?

Every week we will feature an ongoing Q&A session from an area within Arrowhead, called “Ask A Dev”. It’s a chance for you to ask us questions in the weekly pinned topic (Art, Programming, Design, Marketing etc.).

Due to contracts and confidentiality agreements, we may not always be allowed to answer some questions. However, there’s no harm in asking and we will try and answer as best we can!

There have been rumors you’ve been working on a project that utilizes first-person perspective. Has it been a challenge for your 3d artists to increase the fidelity to work with such a close perspective?

I think that the engine used for Helldivers does not fully support modding, which is why there isn’t any. I don’t know about the tech side of things, but as a guess it’s not likely something which will change as it probably would require too much work to get modding to work in Helldivers. Correct me if I am wrong!

Yes there is! I have gotten permission to share concept art with you guys! These are all really old and made by the artists working on the project at the time. I was the only artist who only did 2D but we all did concepts. These are quite embarrassing for me to look back at and admit to be the creator of, but they bring up fond memories so I am happy to share them with you(note: I only have access to a small amount of our concepts, but perhaps others will be able to fill in later ) :

Starting with Super Earth

The thumbnails and final concept for the Helldivers base ship. Pilen told me one morning that we needed a concept for the base ship. He wanted to replace the one that was shown in the teaser trailer with something more detailed and closer to the other Helldiver objects. We also needed it for the intro which I was working on at the time so he asked if I could do it, and I happily took on the challange.

Civilian houses and industrial buildings. I remember that this was a very unexplored area for the game at the time. We had no idea what Super Earth looked like on a ground level at the time, so I got the chance to come up with a few ideas. All of these early sketches were later replaced with a more realistic design.

Helldiver armor customizations. We did not know how many we wanted to do or what they were going to be called, so I had very little to go on for these. I ended up looking through what other games were doing and after some referencing and thinking, tried to push out as many as I could think of, with a megaman and samurai extra which I knew was never gonna pass, but were just for my own fun

Volcanic Planet. We got notified during a morning meeting that we needed concepts for our next planet type for an upcoming DLC, so we took a day to sit down and do some environment concepts. The next day we met to show and talk about what we had done, and this was my small contribution to that.

Cyborg boss. These came about quite the same way as the volcanic planet. We had found out that we were gonna do bosses for the factions for a DLC(Yay so cool and fun! I love bosses!). We spent a day or two for each boss and then threw them in the review pit where we all sat and talked about them together.
My contribution was some kind of amalgamation of Starscream from Transformers and a Warhammer Dreadnought.

And lastly was the illusive Illuminate boss with power and technology beyond our understanding.
In my contribution I was experimenting with how much the organics versus the technology was in power for the final boss.